AMD at CES 2023: 7950X3D, 7900X3D, 7800X3D - VCache Party In Here

[NamelessPFG]

The fact that only one CCD gets the extra cache on the 7900X and 7950X is cause for concern.

Some see it as the best of both worlds, where the non-V-Cache CCD can clock much higher for workloads that can benefit from that.

I see a CPU scheduling disaster waiting to happen, speaking as someone who recently got a 12700K and now has to use Process Lasso to keep programs off the E-cores, sometimes off of the SMT side of each P-core too. (My CPU frametimes in DCS drastically increased from that alone, but it's worth noting that it's still bound to one main thread and a second smaller thread for audio.)

I'm banking on the 7800X3D being the sweet spot for this alone - one fully enabled CCD with the cache, no cross-CCD latency issues or mismatched cache sizes to worry about, and lower price with only 8 cores enabled.

 

[Domingo]

I think I'm interested in the middle child, the 7900X3D. I don't really need the other cores, but could use the additional ooomph. Seems like most people are going for the gusto or the best value, so maybe that one will actually be available at a decent price.

 

[madpistol]

With 8-cores having 3D v-cache, and 8 cores being the normal Zen 4 type, does this not make it the ultimate CPU? It can literally do everything, and it’s good at all of it. This is like Intel with their P-core/e-core setup… but all the cores are P-cores and just more specialized based on use case.

I just got a 5800x3D a few months ago, but this is making me want to scrap it and to Zen4.

 

[Tactlesss]

With 8-cores having 3D v-cache, and 8 cores being the normal Zen 4 type, does this not make it the ultimate CPU? It can literally do everything, and it’s good at all of it. This is like Intel with their P-core/e-core setup… but all the cores are P-cores and just more specialized based on use case.

I just got a 5800x3D a few months ago, but this is making me want to scrap it and to Zen4.

Don't do it. It's a trick.

Just because there's an upgrade path doesn't mean that it's a good idea.

Wait a couple more months.

 

[Sabrewulf...]

So I wonder how the 12 core 7900X3D is going to work then? Will it be 6 + 6 w/cache or maybe a 4 + 8 w/cache configuration? I would think a 6 + 6 w/cache configuration could see some performance hits with gaming compared to the straight 8 w/cache 7800X3D? I have not found this mentioned or discussed anywhere yet?

 

[ChadD]

The fact that only one CCD gets the extra cache on the 7900X and 7950X is cause for concern.

Some see it as the best of both worlds, where the non-V-Cache CCD can clock much higher for workloads that can benefit from that.

I see a CPU scheduling disaster waiting to happen, speaking as someone who recently got a 12700K and now has to use Process Lasso to keep programs off the E-cores, sometimes off of the SMT side of each P-core too. (My CPU frametimes in DCS drastically increased from that alone, but it's worth noting that it's still bound to one main thread and a second smaller thread for audio.)

I'm banking on the 7800X3D being the sweet spot for this alone - one fully enabled CCD with the cache, no cross-CCD latency issues or mismatched cache sizes to worry about, and lower price with only 8 cores enabled.

I can understand the concern... I believe it will be completely sorted when this launches. There is a few years between today and the AMD Microsoft schedule issues from those first chiplet parts. What makes me feel it won't be a problem this time is AMDs other announcements yesterday. AMD and MS got on stage together and talked about AMD making Microsoft an actual M1 AI baked in competitor. That makes me believe Microsoft actually has people working on those issues for AMD broadly... I know different part, its just related work. Last time it seemed like Microsoft basically had no one on that job, and AMD either didn't think about it or just didn't have any pull at MS. This time they have some pull at MS... scheduling will be on the radar.

I agree though that when the benchs hit we will all be looking at the differences between the 7800, 7900 and 7950... going to be many attempts by reviewers to try and stump them and find %s that can spin narratives.

 

[NamelessPFG]

I can understand the concern... I believe it will be completely sorted when this launches. There is a few years between today and the AMD Microsoft schedule issues from those first chiplet parts. What makes me feel it won't be a problem this time is AMDs other announcements yesterday. AMD and MS got on stage together and talked about AMD making Microsoft an actual M1 AI baked in competitor. That makes me believe Microsoft actually has people working on those issues for AMD broadly... I know different part, its just related work. Last time it seemed like Microsoft basically had no one on that job, and AMD either didn't think about it or just didn't have any pull at MS. This time they have some pull at MS... scheduling will be on the radar.

I agree though that when the benchs hit we will all be looking at the differences between the 7800, 7900 and 7950... going to be many attempts by reviewers to try and stump them and find %s that can spin narratives.

Microsoft may put in more of an effort this time, but we can't fully rule out day-one bugs, after all.

This also doesn't factor in alternative OSes like Linux and BSD and how their kernels will react, though I would expect them to adapt more quickly.

As for reviews, I'm hoping that for the 7950X especially, someone will be willing to go the extra mile with Process Lasso and test apps and games on default Windows scheduling/affinity, then limited to the cache CCD, and limited to the fast CCD.

This way, we can verify if it truly is the best of both worlds out of the box, or if something like Process Lasso will be mandatory for every Windows user going forward with all these heterogeneous CPUs.

Too many reviewers these days are eager to just run a set of benchmarks once, present whatever numbers they get, and leave it at that, not diving deep as to what may influence the results.

 

[ND40oz]

So I wonder how the 12 core 7900X3D is going to work then? Will it be 6 + 6 w/cache or maybe a 4 + 8 w/cache configuration? I would think a 6 + 6 w/cache configuration could see some performance hits with gaming compared to the straight 8 w/cache 7800X3D? I have not found this mentioned or discussed anywhere yet?

Based on the cache differences between the 7900 and 7950, I'd think the vcache would have to be on the 8 core ccd. I'm just going to wait until they don't neuter the 7950 and release a 7970x3D with vcache on both. This seems like a stop gap at this point.

 

[Armenius]

 

[Stryker7314]

Finally a successor to my 9900kf @ 5.4. Bye intel

 

[Legendary Gamer]

We used to get montherboards without on board sound,lan,raid
What would a normal user need to add beside GPU?
at most more advanced users will add a raid controller or 10gbit lan maybe for specific uses.
audiophiles would prefer usb DAC anyways , and SLI is dead .
one extra slot is max i might need.

Personally, I add in my own 5/10G NIC on all my Boards and I tend to install a PCI-E Audio Board. My server build uses a 8 Lane PCI-E slot for the RAID controller, a 4X slot for the the 10Gig Nic.

Some of us still rock dual video cards and others use capture cards.

I tend to agree with you in general. The desire for more slots is more of an enthusiast thing than a standard user thing.

 

[Armenius]

Finally a successor to my 9900kf @ 5.4. Bye intel

Thinking the same. Been on Intel since 2007. Whether or not I upgrade early will be determined by the price to upgrade CPU + MB + RAM.

 

[chameleoneel]

I agree completely. We used to be able to get boards with like 4, 5, 6 PCI-E slots on them. Now if you get even 3 that's a blessing. I wouldn't be surprised if this is intentional to force a difference between desktop and HEDT. For example all Threadripper boards I've seen at least have 4.

I think that in general, most motherboards are trying to appeal to a few different users. We have HUGE videocards now-----so more space is needed between slots. Also, people on [H] seem to love more than two M.2 slots---gotta put those somewheres. After that...there isn't much space left for more full length PCIe slots.

That said, most brands have too many motherboards in their lineups. I'm sure they could drop one and instead, have a board focused on PCIe expansion or something.

 

[Armenius]

I think that in general, most motherboards are trying to appeal to a few different users. We have HUGE videocards now-----so more space is needed between slots. Also, people on [H] seem to love more than two M.2 slots---gotta put those somewheres. After that...there isn't much space left for more full length PCIe slots.

That said, most brands have too many motherboards in their lineups. I'm sure they could drop one and instead, have a board focused on PCIe expansion or something.

I worked with a motherboard that has a third M.2 slot on the back.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

We used to get montherboards without on board sound,lan,raid
What would a normal user need to add beside GPU?
at most more advanced users will add a raid controller or 10gbit lan maybe for specific uses.
audiophiles would prefer usb DAC anyways , and SLI is dead .
one extra slot is max i might need.

I would love to go back to that time.

Give me nothing on board, and instead give me 8 expansion slots.

Let me customize my experience with the expansion cards I want instead of picking and choosing from a series of on board motherboard bundles, none of which ever seem to align with my preferences.

This whole concept of putting everyhting on board has absolutely killed the joy in the hobby. There is no customizing my build to my preferences anymore. I just have to deal with whatever Asus, Gigabyte or MSI have chosen for me. IN many cases this results in me searching desperately for boards with more expansion so I can install at least ONE component of my choosing, and then disable a ton of stuff on board that I will never use. It is a colossal waste.

I love the good old 286 days when boards looked like this:

There was no sound on board. No networking. The most you'd ever get on board was a serial port, and even that wasn't a guarantee.
If you wanted anything, like a floppy controller, or a hard drive controller, a video card or a sound card, you added them all yourself, and you got to pick exactly which ones you wanted, and if you didn't want a certain component you just omitted it.

It resulted in diverse and interesting builds customized to the desires of their builders.

I want this back.

 

[Armenius]

I would love to go back to that time.

Give me nothing on board, and instead give me 8 expansion slots.

Let me customize my experience with the expansion cards I want instead of picking and choosing from a series of on board motherboard bundles, none of which ever seem to align with my preferences.

This whole concept of putting everyhting on board has absolutely killed the joy in the hobby. There is no customizing my build to my preferences anymore. I just have to deal with whatever Asus, Gigabyte or MSI have chosen for me. IN many cases this results in me searching desperately for boards with more expansion so I can install at least ONE component of my choosing, and then disable a ton of stuff on board that I will never use. It is a colossal waste.

I love the good old 286 days when boards looked like this:

View attachment 539644

There was no sound on board. No networking. The most you'd ever get on board was a serial port, and even that wasn't a guarantee.
If you wanted anything, like a floppy controller, or a hard drive controller, a video card or a sound card, you added them all yourself, and you got to pick exactly which ones you wanted, and if you didn't want a certain component you just omitted it.

It resulted in diverse and interesting builds customized to the desires of their builders.

I want this back.

Back in those days nothing was built into the board, which is way there was so much room for expansion. Today we have network, audio, serial, parallel, and fan control all built in. Not to mention the hardware necessary to disseminate the high amount of power input required of everything these days.

 

[Randall Stephens]

The fact that only one CCD gets the extra cache on the 7900X and 7950X is cause for concern.

Some see it as the best of both worlds, where the non-V-Cache CCD can clock

just think of them as P cores and G cores. P cores without the cache are for general workloads, G cores are for games. It’s the same thing as Intel except you aren’t getting saddled with a space heater when you load everything up, and a “scheduling failure” won’t make a huge performance swing visible because every core is equally capable, just not running at the same max clock. It’s fucking genius if you ask me.

 

[Gideon]

I would love to go back to that time.

Give me nothing on board, and instead give me 8 expansion slots.

Let me customize my experience with the expansion cards I want instead of picking and choosing from a series of on board motherboard bundles, none of which ever seem to align with my preferences.

This whole concept of putting everyhting on board has absolutely killed the joy in the hobby. There is no customizing my build to my preferences anymore. I just have to deal with whatever Asus, Gigabyte or MSI have chosen for me. IN many cases this results in me searching desperately for boards with more expansion so I can install at least ONE component of my choosing, and then disable a ton of stuff on board that I will never use. It is a colossal waste.

I love the good old 286 days when boards looked like this:

View attachment 539644

There was no sound on board. No networking. The most you'd ever get on board was a serial port, and even that wasn't a guarantee.
If you wanted anything, like a floppy controller, or a hard drive controller, a video card or a sound card, you added them all yourself, and you got to pick exactly which ones you wanted, and if you didn't want a certain component you just omitted it.

It resulted in diverse and interesting builds customized to the desires of their builders.

I want this back.

Your going to be SOL on that. Far cheaper for them to just integrate it into the motherboard and you would also need manufacturers to want to support that market, which I doubt there are any left.

 

[ChadD]

Based on the cache differences between the 7900 and 7950, I'd think the vcache would have to be on the 8 core ccd. I'm just going to wait until they don't neuter the 7950 and release a 7970x3D with vcache on both. This seems like a stop gap at this point.

If they do release a dual vcache chiplet the clocks will likely need to be reduced just like the 5800x3D.
That is why most of us are saying this is the best of both worlds. The chip will have 8 cores that can boost to 5.5-5.7ghz range, and 8 cores that will not boost anywhere close to that but have 2x the cache on them. Some software benefits more from high clock, some more cache. People are correct to be concerned a bit about schedule issues. A split however seems like the best way forward. I mean long term ideally we will be dealing with packages with very different chiplets. Intel is doing it monolithic with P and E cores... but AMD will be going that way as well at some point as well. When they do no doubt they will have different cores on different chiplets. IMO solving schedule issues for a FAST version and a FAT version of the same cores is a stepping stone for AMDs future plans.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Back in those days nothing was built into the board, which is way there was so much room for expansion. Today we have network, audio, serial, parallel, and fan control all built in. Not to mention the hardware necessary to disseminate the high amount of power input required of everything these days.

That's exactly it. I don't want any of their shitty on board components.

I mean, sure. Keep the USB ports. Everything else, get rid of and turn it into more expansion slots! I don't even want the SATA ports!

 

[T_A]

I`m waiting for benchmarks to be sure, but i was planning on a 3D Cache zen 4 for quite some time , 7800X3D looks like my next CPU (currently running a 5800X which i will hand down to my kid )

 

[ND40oz]

If they do release a dual vcache chiplet the clocks will likely need to be reduced just like the 5800x3D.

Good, reduce the clocks and give us the cache or just put the tdp back up to 170 or stretch it to 200 and give back the clocks too.

That is why most of us are saying this is the best of both worlds. The chip will have 8 cores that can boost to 5.5-5.7ghz range, and 8 cores that will not boost anywhere close to that but have 2x the cache on them. Some software benefits more from high clock, some more cache. People are correct to be concerned a bit about schedule issues. A split however seems like the best way forward. I mean long term ideally we will be dealing with packages with very different chiplets. Intel is doing it monolithic with P and E cores... but AMD will be going that way as well at some point as well. When they do no doubt they will have different cores on different chiplets. IMO solving schedule issues for a FAST version and a FAT version of the same cores is a stepping stone for AMDs future plans.

Intel has P and E cores for desktop PCs and at least they're drastically different, they've completely dropped the ball on the workstation market though. For me, I'm getting a 16 core CPU for workstation use and I want the cores to all be equal since the os/software isn't there yet. Having the only differentiator being cache size is the worst of both worlds and potentially will make the scheduling that much harder versus the very different P and E cores.

 

[HeadRusch]

There was no sound on board. No networking. The most you'd ever get on board was a serial port, and even that wasn't a guarantee.
If you wanted anything, like a floppy controller, or a hard drive controller, a video card or a sound card, you added them all yourself, and you got to pick exactly which ones you wanted, and if you didn't want a certain component you just omitted it.

It resulted in diverse and interesting builds customized to the desires of their builders.

I want this back.

oh HELL No

Onboard Audio is a godsend, integrated networking is a godsend, all of that stuff built-in (even on dirt cheap sub $100 motherboards) made sense. There is only ONE problem today, and that is the size and positioning of AGP...no ISA...no....PCI YES! PCI E lanes on a botherboard because your GPU is almost always guaranteed to tie those up. What I think we truly need is for GPU PCIE slots to be broken out which will actually allow the ISA slots to be used for all that junk you want to add in, be it high end audio cards, addtional networking or storage solutions.

But no way am I going back to the day of having to source every component separately, then try to get it all to magically work with IRQ settings and dip switches and that crap.....next you'll want sharp-edged steel beige cases back, I STILL HAVE FINGER SCARS, MAN!...think of the children!

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

oh HELL No

Onboard Audio is a godsend, integrated networking is a godsend, all of that stuff built-in (even on dirt cheap sub $100 motherboards) made sense. There is only ONE problem today, and that is the size and positioning of AGP...no ISA...no....PCI YES! PCI E lanes on a botherboard because your GPU is almost always guaranteed to tie those up. What I think we truly need is for GPU PCIE slots to be broken out which will actually allow the ISA slots to be used for all that junk you want to add in, be it high end audio cards, addtional networking or storage solutions.

But no way am I going back to the day of having to source every component separately, then try to get it all to magically work with IRQ settings and dip switches and that crap.....next you'll want sharp-edged steel beige cases back, I STILL HAVE FINGER SCARS, MAN!...think of the children!

I haven't used the on board nic or audio on any motherboard I've owned in over a decade and don't get me started on onboard wifi...

...and I've owned a lot of motherboards.

Complete waste if you ask me. It's always some crappy Rwaltwk implementation I wouldn't touch with a proverbial 39.5ft pole.

Heck, on my Gigabyte TRX40 motherboard they thought they were smart somehow and I reheated TWO Rwaltwk sound chips on board, i ternally connected via USB, one for the back ports and one for the front port, and that just confused ALSA under Linux and caused it to not see my USB DAC. They didn't even offer an option to disable them in BIOS.

Shit like this I could do without.ibstwad give me nothing. The. There will be less to disappoint me.

 

[mullet]

There won't be a intel fanboi left after this hit the market!!!!!!!!!!!1

 

[chameleoneel]

Intel has P and E cores for desktop PCs and at least they're drastically different, they've completely dropped the ball on the workstation market though. For me, I'm getting a 16 core CPU for workstation use and I want the cores to all be equal since the os/software isn't there yet.

What software are you using?

Because in general, Intel CPUs are killing it, in productivity. A lot of those apps are not nearly as multicore focused as people think. and Intel's single grunt, tends to put them in the lead. (and for the multicore loads, obviously doesn't matter. Because all the cores are needed. And the 13900k is as good as the 7950x, in those case).

If you do have something which is lightly threaded And incorrectly scheduling to the E-cores: you can press scroll-lock and disable the e-cores in real time. (feature must be enabled in the bios).

 

[ChadD]

Good, reduce the clocks and give us the cache or just put the tdp back up to 170 or stretch it to 200 and give back the clocks too.

Intel has P and E cores for desktop PCs and at least they're drastically different, they've completely dropped the ball on the workstation market though. For me, I'm getting a 16 core CPU for workstation use and I want the cores to all be equal since the os/software isn't there yet. Having the only differentiator being cache size is the worst of both worlds and potentially will make the scheduling that much harder versus the very different P and E cores.

As long as the scheduler sees the identifier it really doesn't matter how different they are as long as its assigning the best core for each job. The problem with something like the 5800X3D was simple... not every job needs more cache. Plenty of tasks don't max out a normal amount of cache... where others would use 3 or 4x the cache if it was there.

As for just upping the power and getting the clocks... if that was possible that is what AMD would do. The issue with Vcache seems to be an issue of thermal design. With a normal chip setup cache is not directly situated in logic hot spots... with vcache it is. Vcache may well always have a lower max thermal limit vs a single layer on the same process.

The advantage vs P and E core scheduling is probably simple in this case... worse case if a task is given to the less then optimal core vs the high cache or high freq core, it won't result in drastic performance hits. As long as the scheduler gets it right most of the time its going to be much faster then other chips. (I mean it won't be the same massive performance hit you would see on a Intel chip where it accidently gives a bunch of performance tasks to E cores) I believe the 7000x dual chip parts are going to help AMD figure out what they need to figure out for the rumored Zen 5 with Zen P and E cores. AMD is also pushing out mashup parts like their new Instinct datacenter APUs. Zen 5 is going to be interesting, at this point it may well be possible AMD has Zen 5 skus with potentially 4 different types of x86 cores as well as AI and RDNA bits.

 

[Mr. Bluntman]

Indeed. If we had more dense DDR5 I’d be a bit tempted, but I need more ram than they can do right now. Not going back to 64G to get decent performance. Curious what this could mean for the future of the workstation Epyc/Threadripper. A CCD or two with cache on one of those ….

Or * all * of them...

 

[HeadRusch]

I haven't used the on board nic or audio on any motherboard I've owned in over a decade and don't get me started on onboard wifi...

Eh, we live in different realities, I see those things as conveniences that (other than ancient Windows maturity issues preventing them from doing so) tend to just work. Sound makes sound, LAN/WIFI connects.....I used to be the type who spent hours trying to get slightly faster throughput from my registry settings until I realized everything was already "kinda just working fine if I didn't F with it....". Yes, yes, a little bit of the nerd of yore died in me that day but ultimately I only have so many clocks left and you ask yourself at some point "Do I really want to spend 3 hours
tweaking WiFi configuration settings to get an additional 50mbps of download or is the real answer DIGAF?"..........

Complete waste if you ask me. It's always some crappy Rwaltwk implementation I wouldn't touch with a proverbial 39.5ft pole.

I...see what you did there......

Heck, on my Gigabyte TRX40 motherboard they thought they were smart somehow and I reheated TWO Rwaltwk sound chips on board, i ternally connected via USB, one for the back ports and one for the front port, and that just confused ALSA under Linux and caused it to not see my USB DAC. They didn't even offer an option to disable them in BIOS.

USB DAC.....on LINUX.....dude what are you up to, seriously You aren't running those high bitrate audio files through a 2.1 Cambridge Soundworks setup are you? Are you messing with us?

(all kidding aside, enjoy, I just grew tired of that tweaking world but I totally get the desire to keep making the most of what you can, even if the only person who will ever notice was you. Don't get my wife started on my old ISF Calibration woes for my Rear Projection TV's....same animal).
"Look, Do you see that speed-bump? God Damnit this is a $3000 TV and the frickin Pincushion on that tube STILL can't be properly negated....look that scanline is mis-aligned..") and so on and so on.....

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Indeed. If we had more dense DDR5 I’d be a bit tempted, but I need more ram than they can do right now. Not going back to 64G to get decent performance. Curious what this could mean for the future of the workstation Epyc/Threadripper. A CCD or two with cache on one of those ….

I'm curious what you do with all that RAM.

Lots of simultaneous VM's?

I've had 64 gigs in my workstation since about 2014 when I recommend a server I had built using consumer parts and had a bunch of extra RAM I might as well throw in because it was just sitting in a box.

Because I am allergic to downgrades I have just carried forward 64gigs with each upgrade since, but ai can't say I ever really load it up.

Even right now, working on my Linux desktop with a Windows 10 VM open I have assigned 16GB to my Linux system is reporting it is only using 14 gigs of RAM. (17.5GB if you include system caches)

And to be honest, I only added the 16GB to the VM because I had extra free RAM. For email/office desktop app use I could probably still happily get away with 8GB on that VM without noticing a difference.

If it weren't for my "allergic to downgrades" condition, I'd probably build a new system today with 16-32GB of RAM and be just as happy.

 

[lopoetve]

Eh, we live in different realities, I see those things as conveniences that (other than ancient Windows maturity issues preventing them from doing so) tend to just work. Sound makes sound, LAN/WIFI connects.....I used to be the type who spent hours trying to get slightly faster throughput from my registry settings until I realized everything was already "kinda just working fine if I didn't F with it....". Yes, yes, a little bit of the nerd of yore died in me that day but ultimately I only have so many clocks left and you ask yourself at some point "Do I really want to spend 3 hours
tweaking WiFi configuration settings to get an additional 50mbps of download or is the real answer DIGAF?"..........


View attachment 539655
I...see what you did there......



USB DAC.....on LINUX.....dude what are you up to, seriously You aren't running those high bitrate audio files through a 2.1 Cambridge Soundworks setup are you? Are you messing with us?

(all kidding aside, enjoy, I just grew tired of that tweaking world but I totally get the desire to keep making the most of what you can, even if the only person who will ever notice was you. Don't get my wife started on my old ISF Calibration woes for my Rear Projection TV's....same animal).
"Look, Do you see that speed-bump? God Damnit this is a $3000 TV and the frickin Pincushion on that tube STILL can't be properly negated....look that scanline is mis-aligned..") and so on and so on.....

Not the guy you're responding to, but don't diss my 2.1 Cambridge Soundworks setup! It's 25 years old and Will. Not. Die.

 

[lopoetve]

I'm curious what you do with all that RAM.

Lots of simultaneous VM's?

I've had 64 gigs in my workstation since about 2014 when I recommend a server I had built using consumer parts and had a bunch of extra RAM I might as well throw in because it was just sitting in a box.

Because I am allergic to downgrades I have just carried forward 64gigs with each upgrade since, but ai can't say I ever really load it up.

Even right now, working on my Linux desktop with a Windows 10 VM open I have assigned 16GB to my Linux system is reporting it is only using 14 gigs of RAM. (17.5GB if you include system caches)

And to be honest, I only added the 16GB to the VM because I had extra free RAM. For email/office desktop app use I could probably still happily get away with 8GB on that VM without noticing a difference.

If it weren't for my "allergic to downgrades" condition, I'd probably build a new system today with 16-32GB of RAM and be just as happy.

Massive VMs. My Threadripper box right now has an 8c/64G, 4c/16G, and 2c/16G running right now (and the 8c one is running some nested virt testing, so it's subdivided from there). If I need to work on one of the other boxes in the room for some reason, it can take about 65% of hte load on its own. In this case, right now, it looks like it's running a Virtual Center VM and an NSX Controller.

And I was just gaming on it too, while it was doing that That's why I love HEDT.

https://hardforum.com/threads/shoul...high-end-motherboards.2023788/post-1045543602 is the breakdown for all my boxes - someone else asked recently.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Massive VMs. My Threadripper box right now has an 8c/64G, 4c/16G, and 2c/16G running right now (and the 8c one is running some nested virt testing, so it's subdivided from there). If I need to work on one of the other boxes in the room for some reason, it can take about 65% of hte load on its own. In this case, right now, it looks like it's running a Virtual Center VM and an NSX Controller.

That's nice. I personally have no need for that, as most things I need to leave running are on dedicated VM's or containers on my KVM/LXC server box, but I bet that is a nice system.

And I was just gaming on it too, while it was doing that That's why I love HEDT.

I haven't been able to make myself do this yet. I have a Threadripper 3960x (24C/48T) (which I bought for the PCIe lanes, not for the cores, I would have been more than happy with 8C/16T) but even so, I still have that old hangup from the 90's that you always always always close everything else before starting a game. You don't want to risk the slightlest chance of anything else messing with your game threads and reducing performance.

I even clean out most things running in my system tray before launching a game. Games are great! Multitasking is great! but never the twain shall meet!

I guess I just have trust issues

 

[vegeta535]

I would love to go back to that time.

Give me nothing on board, and instead give me 8 expansion slots.

Let me customize my experience with the expansion cards I want instead of picking and choosing from a series of on board motherboard bundles, none of which ever seem to align with my preferences.

This whole concept of putting everyhting on board has absolutely killed the joy in the hobby. There is no customizing my build to my preferences anymore. I just have to deal with whatever Asus, Gigabyte or MSI have chosen for me. IN many cases this results in me searching desperately for boards with more expansion so I can install at least ONE component of my choosing, and then disable a ton of stuff on board that I will never use. It is a colossal waste.

I love the good old 286 days when boards looked like this:

View attachment 539644

There was no sound on board. No networking. The most you'd ever get on board was a serial port, and even that wasn't a guarantee.
If you wanted anything, like a floppy controller, or a hard drive controller, a video card or a sound card, you added them all yourself, and you got to pick exactly which ones you wanted, and if you didn't want a certain component you just omitted it.

It resulted in diverse and interesting builds customized to the desires of their builders.

I want this back.

No thanks. They were a pain to setup then. Something always conflicting with something else. Nothing wrong with on board nics. Hell you can get 10gb ones in sub $500 boards now. Pretty much every decent board is 2.5gb. Almost no average use needs more then 1gb. I use a DAC now but I never shuddered at using on board sound.

 

[1_rick]

I'm curious what you do with all that RAM.

Eric Raymond wrote a tool to convert source code repositories from older stuff like RCS to git. He wound up converting GCC, which has a repo that's decades old, with lots and lots of branches and cycles. He wound up with a Xeon with I want to say 128GB because you more or less need to keep the entire representation of the tree in RAM--nothing like having a 13-hour job crash with an out of memory error. Definitely a special case, but sometimes nothing else will do.

 

[1_rick]

Something always conflicting with something else.

"Why is it there are 5 devices squatting on IRQ2?!"

 

[whateverer]

I'm excited for this stuff to get cheaper (zen 4 3d in the discount bin)

 

[chameleoneel]

don't get me started on onboard wifi...

There is no better Wi-fi than an Intel chip slotted directly into the Mobo, with Antennae nicely integrated into the back panel

 

[NamelessPFG]

just think of them as P cores and G cores. P cores without the cache are for general workloads, G cores are for games. It’s the same thing as Intel except you aren’t getting saddled with a space heater when you load everything up, and a “scheduling failure” won’t make a huge performance swing visible because every core is equally capable, just not running at the same max clock. It’s fucking genius if you ask me.

That may be the ideal, but whether the reality holds up to that ideal is another question entirely.

The thing about bottlenecks is that they shift around based on workload.

Maybe the same app or game is usually cache-limited, but it hits a point that's clock-limited - will the scheduler suddenly try to switch it between CCDs, potentially incurring latency penalties (and thus high/sluggish 0.1% frame times) for that switch each time? Might be better to whip out Process Lasso and limit the program to the consistently better CCD in such cases.

This isn't even getting into race condition bugs that get magnified with such heterogeneous architectures, which may be serious enough to bring the whole program crashing down. I'd hope there's no more such cases with Alder Lake being out for so long, but you never know how much bad code remains out there.

 

[Legendary Gamer]

I would love to go back to that time.

Give me nothing on board, and instead give me 8 expansion slots.

Let me customize my experience with the expansion cards I want instead of picking and choosing from a series of on board motherboard bundles, none of which ever seem to align with my preferences.

This whole concept of putting everyhting on board has absolutely killed the joy in the hobby. There is no customizing my build to my preferences anymore. I just have to deal with whatever Asus, Gigabyte or MSI have chosen for me. IN many cases this results in me searching desperately for boards with more expansion so I can install at least ONE component of my choosing, and then disable a ton of stuff on board that I will never use. It is a colossal waste.

I love the good old 286 days when boards looked like this:

View attachment 539644

There was no sound on board. No networking. The most you'd ever get on board was a serial port, and even that wasn't a guarantee.
If you wanted anything, like a floppy controller, or a hard drive controller, a video card or a sound card, you added them all yourself, and you got to pick exactly which ones you wanted, and if you didn't want a certain component you just omitted it.

It resulted in diverse and interesting builds customized to the desires of their builders.

I want this back.

I agree. There should still be Motherboards with the ability to choose your components. I still have my first 8 bit sound blaster and I remember that just knocking my socks off. My buddy only had an Adlib board.

I also remember being the cool kid on the block when I added in my first 3DFX Voodoo 1.

The add in board market is damn near dead these days. We can still find stuff but it's not like it was. Back in the day there was so much competition for the components you could put in a system. Audio Codecs like AC97 started the decline with audio boards and damn near killed that market with the advent of Software Based "HD" audio. Technically, it didn't really help that HD Audio is also integrated into most, if not all, Video cards too.

I could go on forever. However, point for point I agree. I don't shop motherboards for their Integrated Audio Solutions, NICs, Drive Support, etc. I don't want any of that onboard shit, I want to cherry pick my own stuff!